(TFT) Big Cidri

[Scott Haley <someotherwag@earthlink.net>]

"In the Labyrinth" says that Cidri has 48 known continents, and many  
more land masses that are considered smaller than continents.   
There's good evidence that there are more continents than the known  
48.  It says that Cidri is about half land and half water.  Every  
Cidri-based campaign that anyone ever mapped is on Cidri somewhere.   
Let's say 100 continents.  The Earth has 149 million square  
kilometers of land, and we usually say we have 7 continents. Divide  
by 7 and multiply by 100, and you get 2,127,700,900 square kilometers  
of land area, and a total global surface area on Cidri of  
4,255,401,800 square kilometers.  If I did my sums right, that's a  
planet with about an 18,400 kilometer radius.  With a similar density  
to Earth, that's 1.44 times ten to the 24th kilograms of mass.  If I  
figured this right (a big "if,") Cidri would have a surface gravity  
about nine times that of Earth.  The exotic anti-mass in the middle  
would have to push on people with eight gees upward acceleration to  
make it cancel out to earth-like gravity.

In physics class I learned that gravity cancels itself out inside a  
hollow sphere, so if the Earth were hollow, there'd be no gravity at  
all inside.  In the hollow space around the anti-gravity ball, the  
only gravity you'd feel would be the anti-gravity.  The "up" force  
from the ball would be stronger than on the surface because you'd be  
closer to it, so there'd be more than eight times Earth's gravity  
pushing you towards the surface.

If a mad Mnoren built the universe's deepest stairwell on Cidri, as  
you walked down and down, you'd feel the gravity get lighter.  You'd  
eventually fly down the stairs in zero gravity.  Then you'd be  
climbing up a staircase instead of going down, as the anti-gravity  
got stronger.  Climbing those stairs would get harder as you got  
heavier, and heavier, and heavier.

The Cidri might have built big underground habitats at different  
levels under the surface.  A low-gravity level would allow  
adventurers to jump around like John Carter of Mars.  Deeper than  
that, you could have strange zero-gravity ecologies, as in Larry  
Niven's "The Smoke Ring."  Deeper still, there'd be places for stocky  
little high-gravity beings.  The dwarves of Cidri might be humanoids  
whose ancestors lived in higher gravity.

I can imagine a race of weird light-hating gravity-loving beings  
living on the inner surface of Cidri.  If a scientist among them  
predicted a disaster that would wipe out all life on the inside, he  
might teleport his son to the surface.  Perhaps the child would be  
taken in by kindly farmers.  Little Kal would be fantastically  
strong, but he'd have to wear sunglasses.  When he grew up, he could  
move a city and be a great hero.

--Scott
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